1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus, a portable information processing apparatus, and an electronic apparatus comprising the above apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently in the field of portable apparatuses, as a small-sized information processing apparatus, a display apparatus which is called a PDA (personal digital assistant) is known. In an information processing apparatus such as a PDA, a PC (personal computer), and an electronic pocket-notebook, a word processor, and a schedule manager are included to manage schedules for individual users.
In most of such applications called a scheduler, the schedule is managed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, in which, for example, a standard calendar display format covering a period of four to six weeks is adopted.
As shown in FIG. 57, for example, a plurality of date display areas 2001 indicating dates is formed on a menu screen 2000 which displays a calendar such as that described above, and operations such as combine-displaying of a line 2002 on the area 2001 and color-displaying are performed to recognize a position of a schedule/non-schedule item and the like so as to confirm the schedule. To see specific contents, the color-displayed area is selected and a window input with data items such as schedules is opened.
In a method such as that described above, however, since only a screen used to search a schedule and the like can be displayed, a defective problem arises that other hierarchical screens need to be opened to see different types of information.
In particular, although a type of calendar-mode menu screen can be displayed to see an information item such as a schedule, clicking needs to be repeated to shift display screens so as to see the hierarchical screen.
These operations to open another type of hierarchical screen are rough for the user when a desired type of information relates to other types of information. It is especially troublesome that the time-wise relationship between a type of information and other types of information cannot be grasped.
Furthermore, since respective menu screens for relative types of information are required to be selected, a plurality of hierarchical relationships among relative types of information need to be grasped.
Therefore, it takes much time for the user to grasp the plurality of relationships and perform the operation. Especially, when information items are related to various fields, functional usability is also troublesome in addition to the fact that much time is required for the operation to obtain desired information.
Incidentally, with a PDA, since a display screen is smaller than that of a standard PC, a problem arises that although an image is compressed or reduced at the same ratio as in the case of the PC, icons are displayed to be so much smaller that items thereby indicated are unclear to identify the relevant functions. Another problem arising in this connection is that a character is unclear to be identified when a font is displayed. As described above, since a character font is reduced to be smaller by changing the resolution as it is, the display image is identified with difficulty.
If the same amount of information as in the case of the PC, icons and fonts need to be displayed in a smaller sizexe2x80x94which is an especially great problem to be resolved for products such as portable computers and electronic notebooks. For example, for displaying the Japanese-language characters, fonts of at least 24xc3x9724 dots are easy to read, but these font sizes cannot be ensured because of restrictions with the display screens and xe2x80x9ckanjixe2x80x9d characters are not readable.
To resolve problems such as those described above, an arrangement is tried, in which a display screen is formed with a metaphor interface defined as a display state of icons and the like.
With a metaphor interface apparatus using a windows system to realize a desktop metaphor, image displaying can be easily understood by users having a knowledge regarding operations thereof, but it is difficult to understand for users having no preliminary knowledge about it. For example, with metaphor interface apparatuses in cases such as Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2-250113 and No. 4-2888641, a window represents an inter-application relationship when it is viewed from the application side, and a window mainly used to perform input operations and icons that represent supported functions, in-execution processing, and the like, are displayed on the same time axis.
With this type of apparatus, no specific meaning is given to the positional relationship on display screens. Therefore, for identification between the window and the icon, users need to memorize the difference between display areas and the meaning of items such as characters and graphics drawn inside them. In addition, users are confused by the performance that objects on different viewpoints are displayed on the same screen.
In other conventional apparatuses according to patent publications such as Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 1-173139 and No. 4-168482, explanatory texts indicating detailed meaning of metaphor-environmental objects such as icons additionally displayed to reduce the burden of memorizing that users may have. With this type of apparatus, however, the icons having additional indications such as symbols and keywords are useful for a user who can understand the indications, but conversely increases the burden of memorizing and reduces operation efficiency for users who do not have sufficient preliminary knowledge because they need to memorize such additional indications. In addition, the visibility of indications such as characters is not good; therefore, such a method as above cannot be applied to PDAs.
As described above, the additional indications such as symbols and keywords provide increased burden to users who have not a sufficient preliminary knowledge because they need to memorize and understand such indications which are difficult to understand, leading to the problem of reduced operation efficiency.
A displaying method for icons as in the case of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 5-2817 other can also be considered for applicability. In this case, however, a displayed condition of icons is standard, in which for users to select their desired one of displayed icons, the only method possible is to find the position of a desired function by seeing a graphical design for function names indicated on the individual icons. In this type of arrangement, respective functions corresponding to icons that are arranged in a matrix pattern can be quickly identified by skilled users who remember a location of their desired icon. For novice users, however, much time is needed before they can understand the function itself, and the location of their desired icon cannot easily be found so that erroneous selection is frequently induced.
Normally, the size of the PDA display section is smaller, on which identification of execution function is difficult and in addition, individual icons are also smaller to cause the selection thereof to be difficult.
FIG. 58 shows an example of menu screen on which a background image and image that are given meaning and displayed. As shown in this FIG. 58, an icon 2012 is three-dimensionally displayed on a menu screen to assist the user to understand it. With this type of display shown as an example, a problem still remains with that assistance by means of character information is needed for the user to sufficiently understand the meaning of the icon information, and hence a display type such as the example cannot be applied to a PDA, of which display section is smaller, for the reason described above.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to overcome the aforementioned problems.
For resolution of problems as described above, an object of the present invention is to provide a display apparatus, a portable information processing apparatus, an information recording medium, and an electronic apparatus. With the provision of these apparatuses and medium, in operation of plural types of information as schedule information, inter-information relationships can be visually grasped, and functions can be easily understood because they are arranged to correspond to icons appearing on a menu screen with no character information. Therefore, the method can be applied to an apparatus of which the display screen is smaller.
To these ends, according to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus comprising displaying means to combine a time axis with a background screen to be three-dimensionally displayed and to display the combined screen on a display screen, a width of the time axis changing to be wider as it approaches a past time and changing to be narrower as it approaches to the future, storing means to store background screen data used to display the background screen and time-axis display data used to display the time axis, and controlling means to display-control so as to combine the time axis with the background screen in accordance with the background screen data and the time-axis display data.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the time axis is given perspective, in which an object in the future can be displayed to look further and an object in the past can be displayed to look closer. Therefore the user can visually grasp old-and-new information at one look through the time axis.
In the operation of plural types of information to the time axis, inter-information relationships (time comparison) can be visually grasped from positional relationships of the plural types of information on the basis the time axis time.
Furthermore, a metaphor is realized such as that the user can easily grasp the meaning so as to avoid the use of characters or the like; therefore, the present invention can be applied to an apparatus such as a PDA of the which display screen is smaller.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the first aspect of the present invention, comprising clock means to allow the controlling means to display the time axis with changing time in accordance with the current time measured by the clock means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the time axis is updated so that a new time axis can always be updated.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the first aspect of the present invention, in which the storing means comprising plural types of information of which attributes are different from each other, plural types of attribute information used to be used for identification of types of the plural types of information, plural items of time information related to the plural types of information, and icon information which corresponds to each of the plural types of information and is at least arranged along with the time axis and displayed three-dimensionally; and the controlling means performs selection of the icon information corresponding to the attribute of each of the plural types of information in accordance with the attribute information, and performs control in accordance with the time information related to the plural types of information so that the selected icon information is arrayed to each corresponding time of the time axis.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the three-dimensionally displayed icon information is displayed to provide the icon information with perspective so that old-and-new of the icon information can be visually grasped through the perspective view. Furthermore, since this icon information has an attribute corresponding to each of the plural types of information, the icon-information function can also be recognized.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, in which the controlling means performs display-control so that a time width of the time axis becomes wider as time approaches the current time.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the time-axis width, which is the width in the direction perpendicular to the past-future direction width (time-axis width), is also formed to become wider as time approaches the current time so as to provide the perspective presentation.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, in which the controlling means performs display-control by changing the size of the icon information so that it is wider at a past time and it becomes narrower as it approaches future time.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the icon information is also given the perspective so that old-and-new of the icon information can be visually grasped through the perspective view.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, comprising operating means to perform operation-inputting of information of the time axis and the icon information that are displayed on the display screen, and in which the controlling means performs display-control so that a bird""s-eye-view-like screen is displayed on which the time width on the time axis is reduce-displayed along with the direction of the time axis and the size of the icon information is reduced linking with the reduce-displaying in accordance with an operation-input from the operation-inputting means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, as the time axis is reduced, the length of the time axis displayable in the display screen becomes larger, so that the time axis is displayed in an image viewed from an upper portion as a bird""s-eye-view. Therefore, a tightness degree of the icon information corresponding to each time of the time axis can be visually grasped and the amount of the plural types of information at each time can be grasped.
According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, comprising operating means to perform operation-inputting of information of the time axis and the icon information that are displayed on the display screen, and in which the controlling means performs display-control so that the time width of the time axis is enlarge-displayed along the direction of the time axis and the size of the icon information is reduced linking with the enlarge-displaying in accordance with an operation-input from the operation-inputting means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, in a case such as that described above, the size of the icon information is variable linking with the enlarge-displaying of the time width of the time; in which when the reduce-displaying is performed, general tightness of the icon information can be recognized. However, according to this aspect of the present invention described as in the seventh aspect, the tightness degree of the icon information in a local time region can be recognized. By this, for the user to visually recognize the icon-information tightness, the recognition can be carried out with no misunderstanding for the visual tightness image, regardless of the time-axis enlargement ratio.
According to an eighth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, comprising operating means to perform operation-inputting of information of the time axis and the icon information that are displayed on the display screen, in which the plural types of information comprises input information to be operation-input and information regarding time of inputting the input information, and controlling means displays the icon information in accordance with the input-time information.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the icon information is displayed in a sequence of input-time information to allow the user to visibly recognize old-and-new of the input time at one look.
According to a ninth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the input information comprises user-specified specification-time information, and the controlling means displays the icon information on the display screen.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the icon information is displayed in a sequence of the specification-time information to allow the user to visibly recognize old-and-new of the specified time at one look.
According to a tenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the controlling means performs display-control to form the icon information within a width-wise region of the time axis so that it is represented to be wider at past time and is represented to become narrower as it approaches future time.
For three-dimensional displaying as described above, the time axis in a predetermined length uses a large exclusive space of itself for the space of the display screen. According to the aforementioned aspect of the present invention, the time axis has the icon information in its width region to allow effective use of the display-screen space and displaying of increased attributes of the icon information. The icon information displayed in this case can either be of a two or three dimension.
According to an eleventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, in which the plural types of information comprise file-size information regarding file sizes, and the controlling means performs display-control in accordance with the file-size information so that a length of the icon information changes in the direction perpendicular to the time axis.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the file sizes (information amount) of the plural types of information corresponding to the icon information can be visibly recognized by the user at one look.
According to a twelfth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the third aspect of the present invention, in which the icon information comprises plural items of first icon information which are formed of characters different from each other depending upon the attribute of the plural types of information, and the control means selectively displays one shape of an icon of the plural items of the first icon information.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the identification of the plural types of information can be presented in the shape or the attribute.
According to a thirteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twelfth aspect of the present invention, in which the plural items of first icon information are formed of characters different in shape.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the user can visually and easily recognize the icon information of the functions which have meanings different from each other depending upon the display data.
According to a fourteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twelfth aspect of the present invention, in which the plural items of first icon information are formed of characters different in color.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the first icon information and the second icon information are distinguished by color to allow the user to recognize these types of information at one look.
According to a fifteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twelfth aspect of the present invention, in which the plural items of first icon information are formed of characters different in size.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the user can visually and easily recognize the icon information of the functions that have meanings different from each other depending upon the display data.
According to a sixteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the input information comprises first schedule information, second schedule information having contents different from those of the first schedule information, and identification information to identify the first schedule information and the second schedule information; and the controlling means displays the icon information on the display screen in accordance with the identification information.
According to this aspect of the present invention, in accordance with the first and second icon information, the schedule contents can be identified with the types of buildings. Displaying the information using the characters is limited for identification. The identification is possible when the information is displayed in the image form such as an icon for the meaning thereof.
According to a seventeenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the icon information comprises icon-switching information to perform switching between two-dimensional display and three-dimensional display, and controlling means perform display-switching between the two-dimensional display and the three-dimensional display in accordance with the operation-input to the icon-switching information from the operating means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the icon-switching information can be used to display the information contents by switching the three-dimensional display to the two-dimensional display. This allows identification of the type of information being displayed in the three-dimensional menu screen and two-dimensional screen. That is, when the user moves in a specific direction through an operation of the operation section with a three-dimensionally displayed screen, a two-dimensionally displayed screen positioned in a specific direction is picked up to allow the recognition of the difference from the menu screen.
According to an eighteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the seventeenth aspect of the present invention, in which the icon information displays scrolling scroll-icon information used to perform scrolling along the time axis and the controlling means performs control so that the display screen is scrolled in accordance with an operation-input to the scrolling icon information from the operating means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, in accordance with the scroll-icon information, the scroll operation is carried out to allow displaying information contents to move forward to the future or backward to the past.
According to a nineteenth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the icon information comprises database icon information formed in a past region on the time axis and used to display contents of the database regarding the plural types of information, and the controlling means performs display-control of contents of the database in accordance with an operation-input to the database icon information from the operating means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, information used to search data in the database can be displayed on the menu screen, in which a complicated hierarchical structure as can be experienced with a conventional menu screen is not used to allow a quick search; by which complicated operation steps can be avoided to reduce the burden that is necessary to the user.
According to a twentieth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the eighth aspect of the present invention, in which the icon information comprises a read-E-mail icon formed in a future region on the time axis and used to read-display contents of contents of the E-mail, and the controlling means performs display-control of contents of the E-mail in accordance with an operation-input to the read-E-mail icon information from the operating means.
According to this aspect of the present invention, since the E-mail information to be sent relates to the future, the read-E-mail icon information is displayed in the future region on the time axis. In this arrangement, the user does not need to study meanings of the icon information in advance, but the user can recognize the E-mail icon information at one look in accordance with the positional relationship between the time axis and the icon information.
According to a twenty-first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twentieth aspect of the present invention, in which the controlling means performs control so that items of the read-E-mail icon information are sort-displayed for each of mail to be sent, received, opened, and unopened.
According to this aspect of the present invention, information is displayed to allow the status of individual E-mails to be visually and easily recognized by the user.
According to a twenty-second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twenty-first aspect of the present invention, in which the controlling means performs control-display so that the amount of E-mail information is displayed for each of mail to be sent, received, opened, and unopened.
According to this aspect of the present invention, numerical values are displayed to allow the number and the status of individual E-mails to be visually and easily recognized by the user.
According to a twenty-third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the nineteenth aspect of the present invention, in which the operating means comprises a pen-input operation member to operate the icon information, and the controlling means performs character-recognition and display-control in accordance with an input from the pen-input operation member.
According to this aspect of the present invention, when information is to be input, after the pen-input section is used and then the operation-input is carried out, the user can perform a storing operation for desired information anytime.
According to a twenty-fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twenty-third aspect of the present invention, in which the operating section comprises a key-input section formed of a plurality of concaved parts.
According to this aspect of the present invention, when information is to be input, the key-input section having a plurality of concaved parts is pressed at the pen-input operation section to perform the operation inputting of write-in data.
According to a twenty-fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information recording medium that stores at least information used to generate a display screen, comprising background screen data to display a three-dimensional background screen, time-axis display data used to display a time axis that changes in shape so that it is wider at a past time and it becomes narrower as it approaches a future time on the background screen, and information used to perform display-control in accordance with the background screen data and the time-axis display data so that the time axis is combined with the background screen.
According to this aspect of the present invention, when the information recording medium -used to form the aforementioned display screen is to be formed, information such as that described above may be arranged to be included. In the arrangement in which the information recording medium is formed, installation and the like can be carried out through the information recording medium not only in the portable information processing apparatus but also in a standard type of personal computer to form a display screen.
According to a twenty-sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display apparatus described as in the twenty-fifth aspect of the present invention, comprising plural items of attribute information used to identify plural types of information having a different attribute from each other, icon information three-dimensionally displayed corresponding to each of the plural types of information and which is arrayed at least along with the time axis, and information used to perform control so that the icon information corresponding to each attribute of the plural types of information is selected in accordance with the attribute information and each item of the icon information selected therein is arrayed to a corresponding time on the time axis in accordance with the time information regarding the plural types of information.
According to this aspect of the present invention, in addition to the time axis that is three-dimensionally displayed, the information recording medium such as that allows the icon information corresponding to the time axis to also be displayed three-dimensionally.
According to a twenty-seventh aspect of the present invention, there is provided a portable information processing apparatus comprising a display apparatus described as in an), one of the first to the twenty-fourth aspects of the present invention.
According to this aspect of the present invention, since the portable information processing apparatus is normally formed smaller and lighter, the size of the displaying means thereof is in most cases smaller than a standard personal computer. Therefore, the display form as described above is applied to the portable information processing apparatus to display the icon information representing plural types of information such as E-mails, schedules, memos, voice memos, and voice mails, by which the user can know the positional relationship of these items of information and can recognize them at one look. In addition, since displaying can be performed on the displaying means in attributes separated from each other with only the icon-information display form, troubles such as those resulting from a complicated hierarchical structure as a conventional application-software combination are eliminated. This allows not only skilled users but an undefined type and number of users to carry out the operation simply, and hence a portable information processing apparatus that is easy to use for the users can be formed.
According to a twenty-eighth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a portable information processing apparatus described as in the twenty-seventh aspect, which is connected to the display apparatus and comprises a wrist-wearing section to be put on the wrist of the user.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the wrist-wearing section is formed to allow the apparatus to be applied to very small information apparatuses.
According to a twenty-ninth aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic apparatus comprising an information recording medium described as in either one of the twenty-fifth and the twenty-sixth aspects.
According to this aspect of the present invention, the aforementioned display screen can be formed by use of a standard type of electronic apparatus.
Other objects and attainments together with a fuller understanding of the invention will become apparent and appreciated by referring to the following description and claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.